I got an Xbox 360 about a year ago with the hope of using it as a media player for my HP Media Vault because it is supposed to be a DLNA-compliant media server. It’s not. You can get it to work by installing Twonkyvision’s server on the Media Vault (which costs another $40), but it won’t stream Divx/xvid-encoded videos, which pretty much renders it useless as a media player in my opinion.
I’m not much of a gamer myself, and so the Xbox 360 hasn’t gotten much use. For some reason that I cannot recall, I decided to upgrade my Xbox 360 silver membership (which is free) to an Xbox Live Gold membership which costs about $7.99/month. I figured I could always just switch back to the free membership if I didn’t use the Gold membership features. After a while of seeing that monthly charge appear on the credit card, I decided to cancel it. I first tried canceling it on-line via the webpage for Live, then through the Xbox console, and wasted at least a half hour before searching on the Internet only to find out that that only way to cancel it is to call up 1-800-4MY-XBOX (1-800-469-9269) to wait to talk to an operator. And that took an additional 18 minutes, most of which time I was on hold.
I really hate it when a company makes such an obvious attempt to hang on to subscription fees that it causes that level of inconvenience when attempting to cancel a service. Signing up took a few minutes and I didn’t need to call anyone, but canceling took 48 minutes from my life. So I’ll post this here for three reasons:
I hope someone Diggs this and maybe it will get the attention of the person Microsoft who can correct the situation. If they do, I’ll gladly remove this from my blog.
I was hung up on 8 times the first day I tried to cancel and 4 times the next day. I finally received a confirmation number after 40 min on the phone with the 5th call and they said my account was canceled. 15 days later I found another $8.65 was subtracted from my checking. Called my bank and they will credit my account and put a STOP PAYMENT with any future withdraws.
Well I guess we ALL should know how these deals work. I am NOT a gamer but my daughter signed up for the free thing and later upgraded I guess? She probably just “clicked” where she should not have. My wife said that they cancelled the service in Jan 2007. But they started taking out $8.65 every month. I work out of state and leave the home business to my wife …. who apparently did not know of the charge!!!! I had to call India to speak to some one named “Brandy” who I could not understand her English, such as it was. After much negotiation I got 3 months out of one year removed from my account and the service cancelled. I then called my bank and made a complaint, and had another 3 months refunded. The charge was cancelled but Microsoft never took the steps necessary to stop taking my money. I wish that old man Gates would read some these blogs …. I feel he would be totally ashamed of how his company has degenerated, especially the out sourcing of American labor to people in India who can’t speak English. Shame on you Gates, loser!!!!
I bought a 3 month membership for 20$ by entering my credit card number through the console. Guess what? After the 3 months, I get an email that Xbox Live will auto renew to the 8$/Month membership. Ive been on hold over 20 minutes. Thanks a lot MS!